Union City Radio

News: An estimated 200,000 Burmese migrants fuel Thailand’s huge fishing industry in Samut Sakhon province, an hour outside of Bangkok. The majority of workers are ethnic Mon from farming villages and they send their salaries to their families back home. Many workers do not hold legal documents and are vulnerable to exploitation by traffickers and lack access to legal protection. The AFL-CIO’s Solidarity Center documents their struggles in a new online photo essay: go to solidaritycenter.org to see it. Here's today's labor history: On this date in 1906, the local lumber workers' union in Humboldt County, California founded the Union Labor Hospital Association to establish a hospital for union workers in the county. The hospital became an important community facility financed and run by the local labor movement.

In 1915, Congress approved the Seamen’s Act, providing the merchant marine with rights similar to those gained by factory workers. Action on the law was prompted by the sinking of the Titanic three years earlier. Among other gains: working hours were limited to 56 per week and guaranteed minimum standards of cleanliness and safety were put in place.

And in 1931, the Davis-Bacon Act took effect on this date. It orders contractors on federally financed or assisted construction projects to pay wage rates equal to those prevailing in local construction trades.

Today's labor quote is by Grace Abbott:Child labor and poverty are inevitably bound together and if you continue to use the labor of children as the treatment for the social disease of poverty, you will have both poverty and child labor to the end of time.Grace Abbott was an American social worker who specifically worked in improving the rights of immigrants, especially those from eastern Europe, and advancing child welfare, especially the regulation of child labor.

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UC Radio airs weekdays at 7:15a on WPFW 89.3 FMYour Rights at Work airs Thursdays from 1-2pNEW! Subscribe to the Your Rights at Work podcast on iTunes! And get the Union City Radio podcast on Soundcloud.

UC Radio is a brief audio version of the award-winning Union City electronic newsletter, featuring DC-area labor news, updates, calendar and labor history with Union City Managing Editor Chris Garlock. UC Radio is a partnership between the Metro Washington Council and 89.3 FM WPFW. Today in Labor History is provided by Union Communication Services; Rockin’ Solidarity is performed by Joe Uehlein and the Bones of Contention; Union City Radio engineering by David Kelly.

Your Rights at Work is a call-in show about worker rights hosted by Chris Garlock, co-hosted by DCNA Executive Director Ed Smith. Produced by Peter Pocock.